


Half-Way There

by Acid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fix-It, Heaven, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27674168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acid/pseuds/Acid
Summary: Dean knows that his heaven is a long dream with Sammy by his side but it's so easy to forget. They eat, they get gas, they drive, and then they sleep. There are no monsters to hunt and their summer has been never-ending. What awaits them at the end of the road?
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 23





	Half-Way There

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Sinick](http://ao3.org/users/sinick) for the quick proofreading job and for fanning the Destiel flames, as well as the journey of watching and reading in the Supernatural fandom together all this time.

It's like waking from a quiet sleep: a long, languid dream interrupted by a sharp itch at Dean's shoulder blades.

This is the kind of Sunday morning dream that feels like it lasted decades, perhaps centuries. The kind of lifetime people once spoke of as ‘a lifetime ago', a measurement of time more than experience. The yardstick that all else compares to. Wholesome as the golden sunset in the rearview mirror. The yellowing cornfields. The cherry-red stop signs. The shining strips of highlighter-yellow and paper-white directing Dean's steering. Dean sticks his hand out of the car window and catches the flow of the wind; his hand scoops it up, navigates it like a sailboat in rough waters, in a wavy path. Led Zeppelin and Van Halen cassettes whirl to life like spinning tires, drowning out the comfortable silence and marking hours of driving across the endless span of earth and sky toward the point of two planes meeting. 

The pavement is far too good here for a backwater-nowhere country road, unworn by the weight of semis, unmarked by muddy tire tracks, not a pothole in sight, not an oil spill, not even a bloodstain from some unlucky critter on the roadside. The absence of death or of life should be disturbing, but somehow it’s not. It's just right.

 _Did Cas design it this way for us? No, don't think of Cas, that he’s not here. Don't poke that wound._ Once the tourniquet is removed from that still seeping stab, the massive outpouring of grief will not be staunched. (Somehow the idea of an omniscient, omnipresent Cas is too much to bear, contrasted by the memory of his everyday human absence. _No! Enough of that!_ )

"You good?" Dean grunts. Yeah, Sammy's good. He's been snoring throughout the past two songs. Baby's tires are a susurrus of easy flight against the unpainted strip of asphalt. 

_Well then._

Driver picks the music. Dean knows that the next tape going in once this one's done is going to be Bon Jovi. 

Sam's by Dean side, always is, always has been. They stop for gas past the state line marked only by the change in tax percentage on the receipt, and drive on. The Impala hasn't needed maintenance beyond a simple change of oil or tires in a long time. Not even any bug-splatter on her windshield or black-mirror paint.

There are no monsters to hunt, despite the weapons rattling in their fully loaded trunk, but there is always the road, waiting for them to continue.

That's how their days usually go. They eat (Dean is through with his pie before Sam finishes his salad), they stop for gas, they drive. They sleep in motel rooms: always eye-watering odes to terrible seventies decor, but the beds are soft and warm (magic fingers!), and their sleep is easy. The weather is always sunny the next morning and the summer never ends.

That is, until, one day, on a ' _take my hand, we'll make it. I swear_ ', Baby breaks down.

No, that's not quite right, her radio fades into static first and then she just... goes slower and slower, and then comes to a complete stop, steered by Dean's cautious hand onto the roadside. Not a sputter from her engine, not a sound amiss.

The radio’s static becomes silence, crystal clear, the kind that should be impossible to hear from a working radio. A brief crackle follows and then a voice echoes, steady as a whisper. A familiar voice, but not Sam's and not a dream. A real, tangible sound to hold onto.

"Dean."

That is the moment Dean finally wakes from a sunny stupor and steps into his new reality. His heart pounds. His back feels like it is on fire, somehow. But that is secondary. They need to go. Onward. Now or never.

Baby's doors are left unlocked. Sam is by his side. Together, they walk, until the asphalt turns to gravel, until the gravel turns to dust and the dust is overtaken by grass and even their road is no longer there. They walk without direction then, but it's the right - righteous - path, has to be, and there’s no other way but onward for Dean, for Sam.

There's a garden ahead, marked by the buzzing of the bees and the scent of heather. A dozen beehives are evenly spaced like a checkerboard in the middle of a sunlit grove. It is awfully warm here. They should have brought water. The afternoon heat is strong and the sweat pouring down his spine makes Dean's back all the more itchy, heavy and numb, burdened more so than ever by flesh and bone. Beyond his body, he's weighted down by something, something that shouldn't be there, but perhaps it's just the heatstroke setting in, how else would he explain feeling so heavy and light on his feet at once. Sam unbuttons his collar. Dean pulls off his t-shirt, shoves it down the back pocket of his jeans and keeps on walking. This is too important to miss, to delay further and yet they're right on time. This feels like everything he's been missing. Everything he needs to seize within his grasp to feel complete.

But first things first. One step, then another... and on and on. All around him the bees buzz like Baby's radio static, the murmur before the final click at the end of his Bon Jovi tape. The flowers' heavy fragrance is sweet and calming, like a dash of pie spice on the flaky crust and the warm cherry filling on Dean's tongue. Can Sam smell this too? Can he taste it, the promise in the air, the expectation, the happening of it. Right now, right here. Sunny dreams letting go of them and fresh reality taking hold.

Dean breathes deeply as if the never-ending journey is finally over. At last, at the end of the path, they've made it somewhere - here - at last. 

Right here. Right over that hill, that figure, unmistakably human. Heart-stoppingly dear.

Open-hearted, open-minded Cas grins up at him, eyes as blue as faraway oceans. Voice as grave as the crackle of lightning in the storms yet to come.

"Hello, Dean."

And just like that, Dean feels his wings unfold - shiny and sleek and etched with silvery tips, all angles and weight, each longer than Baby and twice as wide as she ever was. Lifting him higher, propelling him forward, on and on and up. His hands are free of the wheel and he doesn't even have to steer but will his body to fly and it does. Onward, toward Cas. Until they're finally chest to chest, face to face, and mouth to mouth, and Cas is at last within Dean's reach.

At Dean's side, behind and below, Sam shouts out his joy and it's exhilarating, impossible, and yet, true, echoing on and on in Dean's core, his being, his soul.

Later, much later, Cas lets go of an endless hug and murmurs against Dean's shoulder, their fingers still entwined, his wings folded over Dean's in a gesture that is all too new but familiar all the same. 

"Welcome home." 


End file.
